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Duncan Sheik, who had a pop smash with “Barely Breathing” in the mid-1990s but then found his biggest success — and multiple Tony wins — with the long-running stage musical “Spring Awakening,” has died at 56.
The New
York Times reported that his death was confirmed by his mother, and that he died of organ failure. Sheik had previously been reported to be in critical condition in a Manhattan hospital.
The death came shortly before the opening of a new musical for which he penned the score, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentleman,” an adaptation of Moyoco Anno’s manga graphic novel. The first preview is set for Sept. 25, with the opening scheduled for Oct. 15.
Sheik’s self-titled debut album in 1996 generated “Barely Breathing,” which reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 but felt like it peaked much higher, as the single had a surprisingly long tail and lingered on that chart for 55 weeks.
With thoughtful compositions that reflected his Buddhist bent, Sheik found appeal among fans of both singer-songwriters and the gentler side of alt-rock with material that drew comparisons to high-cred artists like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley.
Sheik grew disenchanted with the music business and successfully turned his attention toward theater with “Spring Awakening,” which opened off-Broadway in 1996 before reaching Broadway later that year, where it ran for more than two years. launching the careers of young actors including Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff.
The show won eight Tony Awards, including two for Sheik, for the score — shared with the musical’s book and lyrics writer, Steven Sater — and for orchestrations. Its source seemed like unlikely material for a musical that would enthrall young people at the beginning of the 21st century,
“Spring Awakening” got a revival on Broadway in 2015 and is due to be seen again in an off-Broadway production starting in November of this year.
Not everything he put his mind to for the stage went over as well. Notoriously, the musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho,” for which he wrote a notably high-minded score, proved to be a Broadway stiff in 2016. Sheik’s other musicals included “Alice by Heart,” an offbeat adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland,” which found him reuniting with his “Awakening” book/lyrics writer, Sater. It premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London in 2012 and ran off-Broadway for two months in 2019.
More to come…
